India‘s leisure panorama shifted Thursday as Reliance Industries and Disney accomplished their long-awaited media merger, creating an Indian powerhouse valued at $8.5 billion. The deal combines Disney’s Star India with Reliance’s Viacom18 and streaming platforms JioCinema and Hotstar.
Nita M. Ambani will chair the three way partnership, with media veteran Uday Shankar serving as vice chair. The merger acquired regulatory approvals from a number of jurisdictions, together with India’s Competitors Fee.
Reliance pumped $1.4 billion in development capital into the enterprise, which can management over 100 TV channels and produce 30,000+ hours of annual content material. The mixed entity reported income of roughly $3.1 billion for the fiscal 12 months 2024.
The possession construction breaks all the way down to Reliance Industries holding 16.34%, Viacom18 with 46.82%, and Disney sustaining 36.84%. In a separate transaction, Reliance acquired Paramount World’s 13.01% stake in Viacom18 for about $507 million.
The three way partnership’s management workforce contains Kevin Vaz heading leisure, Kiran Mani main digital operations, and Sanjog Gupta overseeing sports activities. The merged entity, which has a close to stranglehold on rights to India’s greatest viewers draw, cricket, boasts a mixed digital subscription base exceeding 50 million throughout JioCinema and Hotstar platforms. The three way partnership holds a portfolio of sports activities rights throughout cricket, soccer and different sports activities.
Mukesh D. Ambani, chair and managing director of Reliance Industries Restricted, stated: “With the formation of this JV, the Indian media and leisure business is getting into a transformational period. Our deep artistic experience and relationship with Disney, together with our unmatched understanding of the Indian shopper will guarantee unparalleled content material decisions at inexpensive costs for Indian viewers.”
“That is an thrilling second for our two corporations, in addition to for India’s shoppers, as we create one of many high leisure entities within the nation via this three way partnership,” stated Robert A. Iger, CEO, The Walt Disney Firm. “By becoming a member of forces with Reliance, we’re capable of broaden our presence on this necessary media market and ship viewers an much more strong portfolio of leisure, sports activities content material, and digital companies.”
Shankar added: “The brand new group is dedicated to ship an unprecedented degree of creativity, disruption and new age shopper expertise. As media consumption continues to maneuver to an built-in TV-digital ecosystem, the merger of Viacom18 and Star India provides a novel alternative to reorient the business to raised serve numerous cohorts of shoppers throughout the nation. Collectively, we intention to construct India’s largest built-in media platform which can ship unparalleled experiences in modern and thrilling methods.”
